Mar 23

Doug Gee to be Clear Lake’s superintendent

Posted on Wednesday, March 23, 2016, at 3:00 PM by Jeff

Earlier this month, I wrote a post about former North Tama teacher/coach Doug Gee serving as superintendent for two districts in far western Iowa. Now, Gee is going to Clear Lake for the same position because that district will no longer be sharing a superintendent with Mason City.

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Mar 23

Open enrollment will deal big hit to MMCRU

Posted on Wednesday, March 23, 2016, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

When Marcus-Meriden-Cleghorn and Remsen-Union go into whole-grade sharing next year, the combined districts will lose $450,000 in state funding because dozens of students are open-enrolling out, reports the Sioux City Journal. Distance could be a factor in the exodus, because the combined MMCRU will be serving an area over 400 square miles and Cherokee, Le Mars, or Kingsley could be closer for some students.

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Mar 22

Iowa Falls drops an ultimatum on Alden

Posted on Tuesday, March 22, 2016, at 10:04 AM by Jeff

The whole-grade sharing agreement between the Alden and much-larger Iowa Falls school districts is currently the oldest two-way deal in the state (2004). Any arrangement that’s older has either fallen by the wayside through consolidation/dissolution or only sends students to larger schools and not the other way around. The IFA arrangement sends all sixth-graders, but only sixth-graders, to Alden.

Earlier this year, Iowa Falls told Alden to put up or shut up and demanded a move toward full consolidation. (Times-Citizen links are paywalled and do not show the full article.) Alden responded by saying things were fine as they currently stood. Last week, Iowa Falls responded to that, and it’s a doozy.

“Having reviewed extensive research, data, and findings we have concluded that Iowa Falls’ 6th grade students are best educated in Iowa Falls,” the school board said on the first page of a three-page letter (PDF). That means in two years — fall 2018, after the current agreement expires — no more Iowa Falls students will be sent to Alden. What about Alden’s junior high and high school students? “The Iowa Falls School Board … extends an invitation to the Alden School Board to engage in a one-way sharing agreement…”

If there is to be further sharing done, it will be on Iowa Falls’ terms, with Alden decidedly the junior partner. Iowa Falls occupies Alden’s entire eastern boundary. To the north, Dows just merged with Clarion-Goldfield. To the south, Hubbard-Radcliffe is in whole-grade sharing with Eldora-New Providence (the second-oldest active two-way deal).

To the west, Northeast Hamilton gave up its high school last year and entered a three-year agreement to send grades 7-12 to Webster City. Both deals expire at the same time. Could Alden and Northeast Hamilton figure something out? No, based on the simple fact an entire high school faculty would have to be reconstituted. Both districts have seen enrollment going nowhere but down. The two ships have passed in the night.

The only certain change is that Iowa Falls sixth-graders won’t come to Alden; Alden can still be its own district, with a K-6 school, and send 7-12 to Iowa Falls. Alden’s name and color have already been added to Iowa Falls’ in the current sharing deal, and that’s the best arrangement the school district is going to get.

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Mar 21

A series of unfortunate events

Posted on Monday, March 21, 2016, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

As an Iowa State fan, I know the game is never over until the clock reads zeroes, but … I can’t even.

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Mar 18

Blue Bunny redesign masks decrease in container size

Posted on Friday, March 18, 2016, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Not even an Iowa icon is immune from the Law of Shrinking Products. The week’s previous post referencing the trend was written around two weeks ago, but a tour of the Hy-Vee frozen section has merited a second entry along that line.

A month ago, Wells Dairy, headquartered in Le Mars, unveiled a new Blue Bunny ice cream logo and packaging. Both the Sioux City Journal and KTIV had stories. The ice cream containers are now transparent. But hidden in plain sight is a decline in how much you’re getting. Instead of 1.75 quarts it’s now labeled as 48 ounces, or 1.5 quarts. Some of the specialty ice cream is down to 46 ounces. The default supermarket size used to be a half-gallon — 13 years ago, because that’s when I mentioned the change starting to happen in an Iowa State Daily column.

To Blue Bunny’s credit, the change is acknowledged in a website FAQ and a response to irate Facebook commenters. Taking away eight ounces of ice cream should not be a tradeoff for transparent packaging, and yet, that’s pretty much what happened. Of course, the price isn’t dropping by a corresponding amount.

Wells Blue Bunny could be the last major-label ice cream manufacturer to drop from 1.75 to 1.5 quarts, so I wouldn’t be surprised if store brands followed suit in the next year or so. For what it’s worth (less than it used to be!), the Consumer Price Index does account for continually shrinking sizes of consumer goods.

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Mar 17

The mistakes that keep on giving

Posted on Thursday, March 17, 2016, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Remember when this season’s Iowa State team was “Sweet 16 is the floor” instead of “Sweet 16 is the ceiling”? The bracket wags have, but they haven’t forgotten about the Cyclones’ other classic tournament flops.

“Just look at last season when Final Four favorite Iowa State bowed out in the first game,” says one at the Washington Post, who thinks ISU is the least likely of the three teams from Iowa to win their first game.

Noted Iowa State hater Pat Forde says ISU is a “pretender who will be bounced early” and lumped the Cyclones and Hawkeyes together in the Jeb Bush pool (not fair, because ISU isn’t nearly as effective at setting money on fire). Forde isn’t doing best case/worst case scenarios this year, but ISU’s worst is getting bounced in the first round again, Kansas beating Iowa in the Elite Eight on the way to a national championship, and Oklahoma, Michigan State, and North Carolina rounding out the Final Four. (Astute observers will spot a worst-than-worst-case scenario in there, in which case, see yesterday’s post.)

And then there’s Matt Norlander at CBS Sports, who has Iowa State vs. Iona (yes, that’s confusing, and yes, the selection committee loves playing pranks like this) as one of his five first-round games to watch, which can be good or bad. Norlander ranks ISU 11th out of the whole field with a shot to make the Elite Eight, but rounds out that rundown with:

63. Hampton: The Pirates have made the tournament for the second straight season — and they’re better than last year. Think back to 2001. No. 15 seed. Upset Iowa State. Hey, you never know.

Never, ever, ever able to live it down…

UPDATE: If ISU and Purdue ever played each other in football, would it create a singularity of stomach punches?

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Mar 16

Music to drown by

Posted on Wednesday, March 16, 2016, at 10:21 AM by Jeff

Oh, no reason. No reason at all.

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Mar 15

RAGBRAI map analysis, in dribs and drabs

Posted on Tuesday, March 15, 2016, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

For the first time in decades at least, the full RAGBRAI route was not printed as a single map in The Des Moines Register. This year, the Iowa Life cover on the first Sunday of March was about… prom styles.

Instead, RAGBRAI.com released one map per day for the week and the Register printed that map each day. I am disappointed that a single full route map wasn’t put out, and surprised that the PDFs combined for 20 MB. Those files: Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat. This drawn-out process is very similar to what happened this year to the OTHER traditional big March reveal, and for much the same reasons.

Looking at my compiled universal map and database of every RAGBRAI route and town visited, here are some notes about this somewhat rare excursion to southern Iowa.

  • First visits: Malvern, Imogene (“gravel loop,” only half of which is gravel), Rathbun, West Chester, Columbus Junction, Fredonia, and Letts.
  • To give another impression of how “small-time” this route is, there are only seven towns with a population above 1000 that are not overnight locations. There were 20 last year and eight the year before that.
  • Creston is hosting overnight for the first time since 1997, and Leon and Centerville the first since 1981 (the former was a pass-through in 2003).
  • RAGBRAI goes into Louisa County for the first time since 1979, Ringgold County for the third time ever, and Wayne County for the fourth time ever, but Corydon is still frozen out.
  • Diagonal gets its first visit since 1981. The other tiny locations in northern Ringgold County visited then are left out this time. Garden Grove, Humeston, and Mystic had equally long droughts.
  • I’m surprised that the route does a 20-mile straight shot between Sigourney and West Chester without hitting Harper and Keota, neither of which have been on the route since 1986.
  • Don’t be fooled: Bethesda is a church and a cemetery. That’s 25 miles with no villages between Essex and Villisca. New York is so nonexistent it doesn’t even get a map dot on Mapquest.
  • Much of Sunday is on never-traveled roads, and Monday on once-traveled roads. Creston-to-Diagonal was only used in 1981, old IA 66 is new, and then the entire route from Mount Ayr to Ottumwa hops from 2003 to 1981 to 2009.
  • Everything from the IA 92/W15 intersection south of Keota to the end of the route is all new, never traveled.
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Mar 14

e.e. cummings, web and logo designer

Posted on Monday, March 14, 2016, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

No wonder today’s students can’t understand capitalization rules. Informal typing is one thing, but then there is this ridiculousness. First, this is how election results (in this case, Iowa’s) look on CNN’s website.

cnnresultslowercase

There isn’t a single capitalized letter to be seen, not even the candidates’ names. Is it a coding script thing? If so, the code needs to change to “capitalize first letter of any text string.” Is it a design thing? If so, there are designers who need to be beaten over the head with a textbook or two. (The AP Style Guide is too lightweight.)

Then there’s the Girl Scouts of America, which in a national rebranding in late 2012 put not only the names of the cookies in lowercase, but the organization’s logo itself. This typographical travesty has an identifiable culprit, “the New York office of Anthem Worldwide, the brand development division of Schawk Inc.”

Switching to lowercase letters is supposed to convey “friendliness” but this is extreme to the point of violating basic tenets of the English language. (lol like ppl care about those —Ed.) It’s incorrect to the point of distracting, at least to those with a semblance of education. The only positive thing I can say about intentional un-capitalization in anything that isn’t an Internet chat is that it’s not as bad as turning crimes against the written word into performance art.

The Girl Scouts provided another example of Morrison’s Law of Shrinking Products* in action, too. The previous package of Thin Mints contained “about 8” servings of 4 cookies apiece, and the current one contains exactly 8, shrinking the total from 34 to 32. (Of course, it often ends up as, “Serving size, 1 sleeve; servings per container, 2.” Or is that just me?)

*“Whenever the package says “10% more free” or gets redesigned, look out — chances are it’s preparation for less food at the same price.”

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Mar 12

The Onion writes an unbelievable headline

Posted on Saturday, March 12, 2016, at 10:39 AM by Jeff

“Area Dad Concerned He’s Running Out Of Family Photos To Digitize”

I assure you, this is not physically possible.

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